


Things to Do in Red Rock When You're Dead

by thedevilchicken



Category: The Hateful Eight (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Arousal From Killing, Bounty Hunters, Character Death Fix, Dubiously Consensual Blow Jobs, Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Hanging, Intentionally Bad Spelling & Grammar, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Racist Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-07-29 20:17:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7698058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They died that day at Minnie's, and then they woke back up again. Now they have a job to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things to Do in Red Rock When You're Dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spock/gifts).



The hell of it is, John Ruth was right. 

It's not that he grudges the fella that 'cause if there's one maxim, one dictum, one fucking apophthegm by which Marquis Warren's always lived his life it's _credit where credit's due_ , but that don't do a whole motherfucking hell of a lot to ameliorate the situation at hand. And that first night when they woke on up, the situation at hand was seven shades of fucked up all the way to Sunday and then right back again. 

"Say, major, why are you lying on top of me?" Mannix asked, like either one of them could've had a good answer for that just tucked on into their back pocket, at least no better than a goddamned Lincoln letter in terms of its overall veracity. 

"Well, how the hell should I know that, Chris Mannix?" Warren replied. "Do I look like some kind of ball-rubbing carnival soothsayer to you? Do I look like the goddamned Delphi oracle?"

Of course, in point of fact, neither one of them could see even an inch in front of his face, and so, in point of fact, neither one of them was doing much looking at all. They were lying there one on top of the other in the goddamned pitch black dark, stinking of rot and soil and piss and days-old dried blood and who the fuck knew what else 'cause Warren didn't know, that was for damn sure. 

"You don't look like a whole lotta nothing right now, major," Mannix said, unhelpfully. "I imagine I don't, neither. Where do you suppose we are, anyhow?" 

Mannix was so goddamned cheerful and so fucking blithely goddamned curious about their circumstance that Warren could've slapped that shit right outta him, except he could barely get his arms up past his waist they were tucked up in there in such tight quarters. He couldn't fathom how that awkward damn proximity could bode well for their continued mysterious good health. 

So, Warren didn't reply since there wasn't no good could come out of it; he probed the ground underneath them with his bare hands instead, found wooden boards and stale earth and a rusty-ass nail he caught his finger on and cursed under his breath till Mannix went right on and snickered at him, though they were belly to belly and nose to nose and getting him all riled up could lead 'em nowhere close to pleasant or constructive. 

He couldn't push himself up off of the floor past three inches so Warren kicked up his bootheels and got a dull thump in response from up above. His elbows found boards, too. Jesus fucking H. Christ. 

"Sweet Lord have mercy," Mannix said, though he sounded nigh on wondrous about it instead of being in any way perturbed. That's pretty much been his MO ever since. "They buried us alive."

Warren sighed, a sinking feeling coiled up tight in him down deep in his gut or maybe lower, down where there should've been a bullet in his balls from the shit that'd went down that night at Minnie's. Except he weren't exactly gushing up blood like no damn fountain. His palms should've been slick with it. The two of 'em should've been all glued the fuck up together like a strange-ass pair of Siamese twins with it. But he didn't feel no aching in his private parts at all, which should've filled him right on up with relief nigh on elation but damn, _damn_. He couldn't say he felt all that elated.

"You maybe got one part of that right, at least," he said, down there in their wooden box. "They sure did bury us."

He just weren't so sure about _alive_.

\---

Near two years later, their twenty-second bounty was some sad, sorry son of a gun out of Kansas by the name of Pete Paterson, wanted for a whole string of stagecoach robberies ranging clean across the state. He weren't exactly real good at what he did, per se, he was just some kill-crazy asshole who seemed to've got more ammunition to hand than the whole goddamned Confederate army. By then, he'd killed seventeen men and six women just for the sheer, unsullied hell of it. It seemed to Warren he was just getting started. Paterson had gotten the taste; that was something Warren knew all about.

It was a long, hard ride from Wyoming in winter. Mannix didn't shut his damn fool mouth for five seconds together the whole way there from Red Rock till Warren pistol-whipped the back of his thick-as-shit noggin and strapped him down face-first over his saddle, but even then he'd've sworn the garrulous motherfucker murmured to himself unconscious. It's a skill, Warren guesses, just not one that's got any use in the world at all except to rile him up and make him feel like giving in to his self-confessed propensity toward physical violence. He don't feel real guilty about that where Mannix is concerned. He didn't then and he don't know.

A month after they'd set out, they caught up with Paterson at some hole-in-the-wall outside of Lawrence, like settling your stolen shit down nearby the town you just stole that shit out of has ever been more than a bad idea in a long history of bad motherfucking ideas. Maybe the lawmen in Kansas in their shiny tin stars were scared of ol' Pete Paterson but Chris Mannix and Marquis Warren don't scare real easy and they never really have. They rode into that no-name, no-account nowhere shithole of a town a ways outside Lawrence and they hitched their horses to the hitching post outside of the cheap wayside whorehouse. They pushed open the squeaky-ass old door and they went inside, bootheels thumping against the dusty boards.

"Well, howdy strangers," the proprietor called from his present station behind the bar. He sounded mighty cheerful to get the custom, understandably enough given the place was just as empty as the good Lord's tomb. Probably was Paterson was chasing out their regular clientele and Warren couldn't say he blamed 'em for making themselves scarce. The kid was like to shoot a man dead just for shits and giggles soon as look at him, the way the rumor told it. The way the ladies glared daggers down over the balcony, Warren guessed the guy weren't real popular with the ones who couldn't leave, neither.

"We're sure pleased to make your acquaintance," Mannix said, pulling off his riding gloves to shake the wiry, nervous SOB by the hand. "We're fresh in outta Wyoming and let me tell you, friend, it ain't a real easy ride this time of year, no sir." He put his hat down on the bar and leaned there with a mark from the band stamped over his forehead, real friendly-like, casual though just a little sharp-eyed with it. He glanced at Warren, tucking his coat back behind the gun on his right hip, just about shielded from Paterson's view by Warren's person; Warren shook his head no.

"Place sure is empty for a house of ill repute," said Warren then, chiming in with a real meaningful glance at the sea of deserted tables strewn about the place, all standing vacant 'cept for the one where Paterson glowered drunk and surly in the corner, behind a sea of empty glasses like the owner didn't feel inclined to go collect the empties. The kill-crazy son of a bitch was thinking real hard about going for his irons, a pair of half-rusted pistols on a belt around his waist, that much was for damn sure. You needn't be no bounty hunter to see that. "'Specially one whose repute ain't all that ill, from what I heard, if you catch my meaning." Warren tapped the butt of one gun on his belt, over the top of his thick coat where Paterson couldn't see; the proprietor caught his meaning. In a second, he knew why they was there.

"Will you fellas be wanting food tonight or just some good old fashioned female company?" 

"What's good?" Mannix asked.

"Wouldn't say nothing's _good_ , but it's sure hot."

"Then we'll just go ahead and take a room right now," Warren said. "We'll maybe come down and ask about your women later, should we find ourselves overcome by our baser needs 'stead of the need to sleep."

"Just one room?"

"Just one room, friend," Mannix confirmed. He flicked his coat down over his guns, just for a spell, that same old, familiar, stupid-ass smile all over his fool face though you could've cut the damn tense, smoky air with a knife right at that particular juncture. Wouldn't've made no real difference had all holy hell broke loose, of course, 'cept maybe to the owner and the ladies and the woodwork, but Warren didn't feel much inclined toward darning up bulletholes in his overcoat again 'cause he guessed it was his turn. Many more and the whole damned coat'd be patchwork. "Like I said, it was a long-ass, hard-ass ride outta Wyoming."

The proprietor nodded. He was the shrewd kind, the kind that knows not to ask too many questions if you don't want to hear no lies, and a girl in lacy underdrawers led the two of them away upstairs. 

By morning, the place was rid of its troublesome regular, Pete Paterson. By morning the two of them were long gone, too, though the bed in the room they'd shared was good and rucked up. They don't sleep a whole lot but being dead's done wonders for their sex lives.

They left the rope behind. They was hangmen, after all. 

\---

It don't much matter what you do with the son of a bitch once he's hanged, so they tossed Pete Paterson's ass in a ditch just outside of Lawrence and started home. They went back by the place a couple times over the years, before some liquor-fueled, drunk-ass fire burned it right on down to cinders in the dirt, but at least it turned out they could say business had picked up again mighty swift after ol' Pete Paterson had split. Warren and Mannix got their stays for free. At least they did while they still looked right and recognizable. It turned out their faces changed.

"Shit, I thought you fellas were never getting outta there," John Ruth said, the night they crawled up on out of their grave. 

Warren was still spitting out grave dirt with his face in the snowy mud right then so he didn't take in the full extent of the fuckedupedness of the situation for one long-ass moment more, but when he did, it was impressively goddamned striking. John Ruth the Hangman was sitting there large as life and twice as motherfucking ugly on the grass that'd grown over the very next grave in the neat little cemetery row, leaning on back against a big ol' hammered-in wooden cross with a flask in one hand and a cigar in the other. It was night-time and the moon was real big and full up overhead because shit, you know it was, not even just the way they told the story later. It was some creepy-ass shit right there.

"If you was so desperate to see us boys, John Ruth, you could've found yourself a shovel and lent a hand," Warren said, then got to pulling himself up the rest of the way. They hadn't been buried a full six feet under the ground, thank the good Lord for his infinitessimally small fucking mercies, but they _had_ just clawed their way out of a wooden box. Warren's hands was still bleeding all the way down his wrists and dripping down into the dirt. 

Ruth took a swig from his hip flask and shrugged. "But that would've ruined the surprise," he said, and flung his arms out wide, spilling his whiskey on the ground in the process. "Surprise!"

Warren guesses he was surprised. He was something, at least, and he probably looked it. 

"Besides, I figured you and that hillbilly son of a bitch Chris Mannix ought to start getting yourselves used to close quarters," John Ruth continued. "You'll sure be spending a lot of time together from now on."

Warren _was_ surprised. He was something else, too, and he definitely looked it. 

"Say, where _is_ Chris Mannix?" Ruth asked. And Warren knew the bastard knew 'cause it weren't like he'd tunnelled his way out sideways, and it came as no surprise to either of them when Mannix came gasping and cursing and clawing up out of the same hole in the ground that Warren'd just then vacated. He looked grim. Fuck, they both did, covered in dirt from head to toe and sitting there in their boots and their bloodstained long underwear like someone'd stole all the rest of their shit straight off their goddamned corpses. Truth was, they likely had. 

"John Ruth!" Mannix said, once he'd spat the dirt out of his mouth and rubbed it out of his eyes. "John Ruth! What in the name of the sweet baby Jesus is going on here? Why in the name of hell are you sat out here smoking a damn cigar 'stead of helping us? And why oh why in the name of the god of my illustrious fucking forefathers was we buried here in the first place?"

John Ruth sipped his hip flask whiskey. John Ruth puffed on his big-ass cigar. John Ruth stretched real good and took his own good motherfucking time about it while Warren and Mannix just sat there like a pair of fucking jackasses and stared at him in the moonlight, expectant. 

"Well now, that's a whole lot of names you just asked a lot of questions by," Ruth said. "And you boys're gonna be needing new ones. Names, that is. And it just so happens I got those for you right here." 

They didn't get why they'd gotten new names, or why they needed them, till John Ruth dragged their asses back to his hotel room back up the road in Red Rock, trailing dirt on top of all the crunchy-topped snow over ice over dirt. And when they got there, there was a big ol' mirror bolted to the wall like that weren't a luxury most shitty hotels west of nowhere didn't have back then and John Ruth stood 'em both there in front of it. They was themselves when they looked at each other, sure, but in the mirror they was somebody else. So was John Ruth, for that matter. It was some creepy-ass shit, just like the whole damn thing from start to finish.

"Well, if that ain't the darndest thing," Mannix said, poking at Warren's face while he stared at them both in the mirror. 

Warren slapped Mannix's filthy goddamned hand away, then slapped him round the back of the head. Mannix grumbled. John Ruth sniggered and shook his head, then he clapped them both across the back so hard they shook off more dirt all over the floor, like it made a difference in that shitty Red Rock hotel room. Warren didn't wonder about the last time it'd been cleaned 'cause chances were it hadn't been.

"Welcome to the Hangmen, boys," John Ruth said, as they all looked at each other in the mirror on the wall.

Warren guessed that meant something. And once he found out what that was, maybe then he'd ask how in the blue fucking blazes Ruth had gotten his arm back.

\---

"Did you hear what this asshole just called me, Chris Mannix?" Warren said, while they were out working on bounty number nine. 

"Major, I do believe this fine, outstanding example of our modern Confederate youth just called you nigger," Mannix replied, from over where he was leaning all nonchalant against the closed barn door, arms crossed over his chest. 

"Now, that's what I thought he said." Warren looped the noose around Francis Fulton's redneck red neck and yanked it up tight under his Adam's apple. "But then I thought to myself, no, surely it can't be this articulate, intelligent son of the glorious South just called me nigger. Don't he know that we're all friends now?"

"I do believe that's how it's s'posed to be, yes siree," Mannix said. "Mayhaps he ain't heard the war's over and right now we're all just one big happy family here in these United States."

"Or maybe it's just he ain't scared enough to start pleading with us yet."

Warren walked back around the fella, walked right on up to Mannix by the door, and they stood there admiring his handiwork, arms crossed over their chests. Mannix pulled a flask from his inside pocket, took a swig of whatever was inside and then handed it to Warren; Warren drank after him, wondered what the fuck he'd just gone and done for a second after that, then decided fuck it and took another mouthful of whatever the fuck gutrot swill apparently hadn't yet rotted Mannix's guts though who the hell knew how it hadn't. He polished off what was left in there in a couple of long, burning fucking gulps and Mannix scowled at him as he passed the flask back empty, then he shook his head and all of a sudden fairly fucking launched the thing across the barn. It smacked Francis Fulton square in the teeth - Warren was pretty damn sure he couldn't've aim better if he'd tried - and dropped to the floor with a clatter. Warren had to admit he was impressed. 

"He look scared to you yet?" Mannix asked. 

"Not nearly scared enough," Warren replied. 

And Francis Fulton spat blood on the floor and said, "Fuck you, I ain't afraid of no nigger." He spat again. "And I ain't afraid of no nigger-lover, neither. Why don't you just suck his dick, nigger-lover? You're a fucking embarrassment to your race is what you are. I hope you choke on it."

Warren looked at Mannix. Mannix looked right on back at Warren. And for a second, just for one dumbass second, the wide-eyed, red-handed look on Chris Mannix's face said right at that moment, now he'd heard the words out loud, it'd occurred to him how he might've liked to've gone ahead and done it. He might've gotten down on his knees in the dust and the straw and the dried-up horseshit, knelt in their bounty's stray fucking blood and spit and put his hands on him. He might've gotten his dick out of his pants and jacked him for a second, jacked him till he was hard while he rocked back on his heels. He might've closed his eyes and sucked his cock right in front of that mouthy fucking redneck asshole Francis Fulton till he got his smart white mouth full of a black man's come. He looked like he would've liked it.

But Mannix turned to Francis Fulton and he gathered the rope up in his gloved hands instead. He pulled, so Warren stepped up and pulled with him. They hauled Francis Fulton's ass up high just like they'd hauled up Daisy Domergue and they tied off the rope and they left him there, dancing his pretty little jig up in the air. 

"Well, that went real smooth," Mannix said as they fired the barn, after, just like he was searching out words to say to break the silence. The place went up like kindling, like Wellenbeck back in the day. Warren watched it with a pang not totally unlike nostalgia.

"Don't it always?" Warren replied, offhand, and tapped his hat down into place. It didn't always, but that seemed kinda beside the point. They was just making conversation so they didn't have to speak about what Francis fucking Fulton had just said to them.

But while they left, while they got up on their horses and rode outta town, while the big barn blazed with Francis Fulton there inside it, while they got on the trail back out to Red Rock, Warren was trying like hell not to notice the fact Mannix had gotten hard right there in front of him, in his worn old dusty-ass pants. 

While they left, he was trying not to think about Chris Mannix getting down on his knees. He was trying not to think he would've let him. 

\---

"Welcome to the Hangmen, boys," said John Ruth, and Mannix said, a frown on his face like somebody just told him to say the damn alphabet backwards, "Just what the fuck is _that_ supposed to mean?"

"It ain't obvious?"

"No, that shit really ain't fucking obvious," Warren said. "Your gleeful white ass is just gonna have to sit the fuck down and explain this situation out to us, like we was five years old." He glanced over at Mannix. "Hell, for some of us that ain't exactly a daunting stretch of the imagination."

Mannix glowered but that shit weren't exactly a whole lot more than just a faint amusement to Warren given Mannix was stood there in his filthy goddamned union suit and boots that were likely half full of cemetery soil just like Warren's were. But then John Ruth took a seat on the edge of his rented bed and the two of 'em just stood there gawking at him like some goddamned music hall comedy double-act while he explained the situation. He explained it like they was five years old. It was still pretty hard to swallow even put across in simple fucking terms, or it should've been. It really _should've_ been, 'cept there was a kind of grim sense to it.

"I'm sure you fellas'll excuse me if I say that all sounds just like a steaming pile of horseshit," Mannix said, after, 'cept he didn't sound a whole lot like he disbelieved it. Warren couldn't say he did, neither, though he couldn't've explained why if you'd've paid him his own damned weight in gold to do it. They looked at each other then they looked at John Ruth and of course the bastard was smiling a big ol' alligator smile, a shit-eating grin, while he eyeballed them both like it was fucking hilarious. For him, it likely was.

"Then why don't I just go on ahead and give you boys your orders?" he said, and he pulled a packet out of the inside pocket of his furry overcoat. He held it out. Warren took it. Warren fairly snatched it and opened it right up.

It took maybe three seconds for Warren to know he couldn't've disobeyed those damned orders if his immortal soul had depended on it; he guesses now that's 'cause he knew, somehow, somewhere deep down, his immortal soul depended on doing just exactly whatever it was they said. They was bound to it, him and Chris Mannix, and bound the fuck up to each other. John Ruth had told the truth: their dumb asses had been conscripted.

The next morning, they set out on their first job. They've never stopped since, at least not for long.

\---

They took bounty number ten a little over three weeks after number nine, out in Montana in a fucking monsoon. 

The heavens opened up with a God Almighty fucking clap as they was hauling on the rope around Thomas Taylor's neck, pulling his dumb white ass up over the sturdiest tree branch they could locate in the vicinity, and goddamn if lightning didn't strike that tree right up on fire 'cept the rain that came down right after put it back out again in seconds. Warren figured if that weren't a sign from heaven up above then nothing was and once they'd tied off the rope they scurried their asses into the rickety old cowshed just a ways away where they'd stowed their horses. When they got inside, turned out Mannix was brazenly fucking hard again. He didn't even try to hide it.

"Are you seriously gonna tell me you're turned on by this shit, Chris Mannix?" Warren said, taking a load off on a stack of dusty old sacks while the rain drummed hard on the shitty, leaky tin roof up overhead. If he'd reached up his hands not even all the way he could've touched it was so low down, but he thought he'd've probably gotten some fucking exotic disease from the metal it'd been so long abandoned.

"Are you gonna tell me you're not?" Mannix replied. "'Cause if you are, I'm sure as shit gonna call you a dirty, lying son of a bitch."

Were he honest, and he weren't often real honest, Warren guessed Mannix was right on both counts. 

They took bounty eleven a little under three weeks after bounty number ten, a ways south in Colorado. 

Denver weren't much of a town back then but it was on its way up in the world and they found Robert Rawlins in a hotel room with a lady of the night. Mannix paid her off outside the door and then they went inside instead, not like they made for great nighttime entertainment; they'd gotten a rag stuffed into the fool's mouth before he could shout his boys for help, they tied his hands behind his back so he couldn't struggle much, and they hauled his ugly ass up over a beam by the neck. He didn't kick for long. They held his legs. 

When they was done and Rawlins was left there swinging to himself, Mannix glanced down at the bulge in Warren's pants like Jesus, fuck, this time he might really go and do it. Mannix bit his lip and worked his jaw like he was mulling it the fuck over. Then he turned for the door instead.

"Was you ever really gonna be sheriff of Red Rock?" Warren asked as they made their way back out and closed the door behind them, leaving Rawlins at the end of the rope. They had a couple of rooms of their own down the hall, not that they were under the names of Marquis Warren or Chris Mannix. They hadn't looked like themselves in a year by then, Warren guessed, and back then there weren't no damned biometric ID so it weren't like it mattered none anyhow. 

"Why, Major Marquis," Mannix replied,with a tilt of his head, and pushed open the door to his room. "Now tell me, when did I ever lie to you?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out," Warren said, and Mannix beamed just a second before he closed the door damn near in Warren's face. The problem was, he was pretty damn sure Mannix wasn't lying and Major Marquis Warren was the only real liar there in the general vicinity. Shit, even their sometime visitor John Ruth was ten times more truthful than he'd ever been.

They took bounties twelve, thirteen and fourteen dead on three weeks to the day after number eleven, fifty miles outside of Red Rock on their way back home. They fucked it up real good. 

"I don't ever want to get shot in the belly again," Mannix said, once they'd strung up their three bounties on a shitty improvised gallows by the road. They'd come around faster than their outlaw friends could; turned out the more they died, the fast they came right on back to the land of the living, not that they remembered the other side. 

"I can't say I disagree much with the sentiment," Warren replied, as he wiggled a finger through a bullet hole in his coat, right over his guts. "Well, shit. It's your turn to darn shit up this time."

"Nuh-uh, no it ain't." Mannix skipped on ahead, right on up to their horses, through the snow. It was winter again, one year just gone by, the first in a long line of years that've gone by since the start and still do now. "And I don't lie, if you care to recall."

Warren swung himself up into the saddle. "I'm starting to think maybe that ain't entirely true," he said. 

Mannix winked. He didn't answer.

\---

Turned out their very first bounty was sweet ol' Daisy Domergue's outlaw brother, Jody. They'd hanged the sister but not the brother so in the morning they went back to the cemetery and they sat there all day long. 

It was snowing again by then and though they felt the cold, they didn't _feel_ it, not the creeping fucking terror like they might go on and freeze to death 'cause they both knew they'd just come right on back. And maybe John Ruth had drunk out of a hip flask that first night but they didn't need no food or drink 'cause they didn't get hungry or thirsty, and the night before they hadn't slept because turned out they didn't need that, neither. John Ruth had pointed out they could, if the situation called for it or they just felt so inclined, but it weren't strictly necessary. Warren decided he could live with that, or whatever the hell it is they do if they ain't exactly living. 

Jody clawed his way on out of that grave just after nightfall. It was snowing again by then so all the decent folk was shut up tight indoors and there they was, moving around just to keep the snow from settling like a blanket over the top of them as well as on the ground. Then there was Jody, his hands first, then his ugly head, coming up out of the ground. Warren came real close to just putting a bullet right between Jody's eyes and shuffling him back on out of this mortal coil but Mannix reached down and took the son of a bitch's hand instead. He planted his feet real good and pulled him up with a strain and a grunt. 

"Well now, what the hell did you go and do a dumbass thing like that for?" Warren asked, with a curious tilt of his head as he holstered his pistol back up again. 

Mannix dusted off his dirty hands on his newly-acquired replacement pants. Seemed like John Ruth had all the angles covered, clothes and guns and horses, a new base of operations; they was set for a good long while. 

"What, you're saying you wanted to wait out here in the goddamned snow a while longer while he crawled on up here all molasses-like?" Mannix replied. "I just saved us fifteen minutes we could be eating us a fine steak dinner. When was the last time you had steak, major? I'll wager it's been a good long while."

"Now hold your fucking horses," Warren said. "Don't go putting your hillbilly motherfucking words in my mouth. Pulling him up like that's gonna go getting his hopes up is all."

"SO you're telling me you ain't no mean old black bastard after all?"

Warren raised his brows real meaningful in Jody Domergue's direction; Mannix broke right on out into a grin that stretched clear from ear to ear. And Jody said, once he'd spat out the dirt and cleared his throat, "What in the name of all that's good and holy are you boys talking about? What the fuck's going on? Where the hell am I?"

"Your unfortunate white ass just came back from the dead," Warren said. 

"And the two of us is here to send you back again."

They shoved him down on the ground. Mannix slipped the rope around Jody's neck. It was already tied up in a pretty little noose; all they had to do was pull it tight. 

They reburied Jody Domergue while the moon was rising. Then they went back on into town and they ate themselves a fine steak dinner. 

\---

"How long was we dead the first time?" Mannix asked, when John Ruth swung by before bounty fifteen. 

"Well, now," John Ruth said, and took a mouthful of Warren's good gin as he lounged in Warren's chair. Sometimes Warren thinks the only reason he don't shoot the bastard in the head's 'cause he knows he'd get back up again and he don't want to run out of bullets. "I heard you two start scrambling around down there maybe four days before you climbed on out again, and I watched you get tossed into that cheap-ass coffin and buried three days before that. I guess you was six feet under a week. Took me some time to drag your asses into town from Minnie's, let me tell you, so you were dead what, five days?" He shrugged. "That's pretty average, the first time."

"The first time?" Warren said. 

John Ruth nodded. "Oh yeah," he said. "Don't you go thinking you boys can't die now 'cause you sure can. And don't worry none about losing limbs; we've got that shit covered." He waggled ths fingers of his none-too-detached arm. "Just don't you die with no rope around your neck or you won't ever be coming back."

Then he got himself up and he left the way he'd come: through the closet door and into nothing, like that weren't all kinds of fucked up.

Pretty soon after that they learned they came back quicker each time, so after that there were these fucked-up periods between jobs where they took turns shooting each other dead. Five days turned to four, two, one, twelve hours to six, to three. These days, it's minutes. These days, they fuck each other up just for the hell of it sometimes. Sometimes it's so they recall what it's like. Sometimes it's 'cause they get off on it.

They did number fifteen a week later, in some shitty no-name town the name of which Warren's pretty sure never made it onto any map there's ever been. James Jeffries had been terrorizing the hell outta that town and so when they had him swing real nice from the signpost outside the general store, the townsfolk didn't bat a single goddamned lash in their direction. 

"What's going on with all these bullshit alliterative names?" Mannix asked, as he was peeling off his gloves, but his gloves weren't where he was looking, not even close. "James Jeffries, Thomas Taylor... Shit, these boys' parents was somewhat lacking in imagination."

Then Mannix looked at Warren's face and saw him watching him. The son of a bitch had to've guessed Warren'd seen where he'd been staring, right down between his thighs. 

"You wanna suck my cock, Chris Mannix?" he said. 

"I ain't never sucked no nigger's dick before," Mannix replied. 

"And whether you've sucked black dick before ain't the goddamned question."

For a second, just a second, it looked like Mannix might've gone ahead and done it, right there in the middle of the street while James Jeffries swung. Warren would've sworn on his life Mannix'd been thinking about it, just sinking on down to his knees and doing it, but he winced and looked away instead. 

"No," he said. "No. I ain't getting down on my knees for no man, black or white. I ain't like that." And he stalked the fuck away. 

Turned out Chris Mannix lied ten times worse than Warren told the truth. When he lied, Warren could see it a mile away.

\---

"Well shit, fellas, put some clothes on," John Ruth says. 

Mannix groans and covers his face. Warren just shakes his head and says, "Fuck you, this ain't public property, how about you learn to knock?"

John Ruth shrugs and sits down on the end of the bed. All three of them know he don't really give a fuck what they do off the clock as long as they work when they're on it and besides, the asshole could waltz right in through any motherfucking door he likes but he keeps on choosing the closet; he could choose the front door or the kitchen or maybe even crawl on in through the shitty pine drinks cabinet they knocked together fifty years ago that keeps on giving them both splinters they suck out with a curse, anywhere instead of the bedroom, so chances are he just likes to fuck with them. That ain't a real big surprise, considering the one trait they've all for damn sure got in common. 

"Yeah, I'm real pleased to see you, too," Ruth says, and tosses the packet down onto Warren's lap. These days, passports and ID come with the job and their faces change real often. These days, the wanted poster comes on a USB drive for the computer that shouldn't work out there in the back of beyond but somehow it does even so. Shit, they don't even really got power out there, they don't even got a telephone, let alone a decent wifi signal. It ain't no multicultural metropolis out there, it ain't like they're living in a fucking internet café with smartphones and Google. Warren stopped questioning that shit about five seconds after he realized 'cause fuck it, that way madness lies. As if they ain't all there already.

Warren opens up the packet. Mannix reaches for the laptop by the bed and hands it over to him. They go to work, and John Ruth stays just long enough to drink them right out of Warren's good gin, just like always. 

Minnie's ain't Minnie's anymore and the Overland Trail ain't the Overland Trail. Butterfield's coaches don't stop by no more 'cause there's cars and buses and airplanes and shit and horseback riding's pretty much just for ranchers and for tourists. John Ruth bought the land Minnie's stood on back when all the corpses were still fresh and he gave the place to the two of them, under their new names. He said they'd need somewhere to work from, and a place those few last miles outside of Red Rock was as good a place as any. 

There's no running water - they use the well. There's no electricity - they didn't need none back when they was still alive and they don't need none now. Sometimes in winter they still need a guide rope to find their way out to the john in all the snow and sometimes John Ruth steps in outta the cold with snowflakes in his beard and for a second it's like someone's gonna yell _you gotta nail it shut_. For a second, sometimes, they're not sure it's him. It's like the end of the earth out there sometimes, a vast white hell. Most of the time, it's a whole lot like home. 

And okay so all the old shit's been replaced with new shit that ain't necessarily better shit but at least it ain't nearly a hundred and fifty years old for the most part, but sometimes Warren wakes up in the night feeling kinda like Jody Domergue's still down in the cellar waiting there to shoot his nuts off. 'Cept he recalls how they hanged Jody's ass so it ain't like he's coming back in a hurry, not unless hell spits him up on out. 

They never get the call for the real high profile jobs and Warren thinks John Ruth's kinda pissed at them for that, even though them getting their dumb asses conscripted meant he got bumped up one step on the ladder, out of hunting, into management. Of all the guys he could've gotten his sorry ass stuck with, he's got them, and they ain't subtle. They've gotten pretty good at staging scenes so it don't look like premeditated murder straight off the bat and then they string up the corpse before it's had chance to come back, but shit, they ain't real subtle nonetheless: they use guns, they get themselves shot up, they ain't exactly the Siegfried and fucking Roy of the undead assassin underworld. 

They've been bounty hunters all along, and not much more. 

\---

Before bounty sixteen, back at Minnie's that even then weren't Minnie's, Warren finally had enough. He pulled his gun and marched Mannix out into the snow. 

He marched him good and long and bare-ass naked 'cept for his boots, with his pistol trained on Mannix's bare back, till Warren was really starting to feel the cold right down to his bones if not the way he might've in the past, before, so who the fuck knew how it felt to Mannix. And all the time, Mannix was glancing back over his shoulder like he knew what was coming 'cause he'd heard that story that time that night at Minnie's, the one about the general's son, that was maybe true and then again maybe wasn't. Mannix was expecting it when they stopped, when he fell to his damn fool knees in the snow, all shivering right from head to toe. He was expecting it when Warren said, "I'll take you back, you hillbilly son of a bitch, but you know what you gotta do for me first."

It was Mannix who got Warren's dick out of his pants then, with shaking fucking hands; Warren didn't have to ask again. And then he sucked him. He sucked him till he was hard then till he was finished and then he kept on going after, maybe just 'cause he was warm. Then Warren shot him in the head and maybe he'd've left him there, he likes to think he would've, except it turns out John Ruth was right: they can't get all that far apart before they're dragged back in, like there's a rope around their necks, like they're tied right to each other. So he dragged his naked ass on back to Minnie's through the snow, and Warren told himself he would've left him if he could've, even if he's not so sure these days. And not even all that long after, Mannix woke up warm in bed, the fire roaring. 

"You'd best not've interfered with me none while I was gone," Mannix said, and sat himself on up. "Shit, are you making eggs?" 

And that was that; Mannix got himself up and they ate at the table. They didn't mentioned what'd happened. They sure as shit didn't mention Mannix didn't have to do what he did, not at all. They didn't mention how they both knew he'd've just come right on back. 

After sixteen, someplace dry in Arizona, Mannix got hard and Warren got likewise, like getting damned inappropriate wood was some kind of fucked-up reward from on high for what they'd done, like positive fucking reinforcement. They tossed the body in the creek nearby and they rode on into town to their hotel and when they went upstairs, Warren pushed on into Mannix's room right with him before he could lock the door. It was Warren locked the door, when they was both inside.

Mannix didn't stop him. All he did was frown and say, "You really like that shit you got General Smithers' boy to do to you?"

Warren set his hands at his hips. "You think I get white boys sucking on my johnson 'cause I _don't_ like that shit?" he said. 

"I guess not," Mannix replied, and he frowned a whole lot deeper, like he'd just gotten a whole lot more confused and with a dumbass redneck like Mannix, anything was possible. 

"Is this all 'cause you think I don't like fucking ladies?" he said, after a long-ass moment. "'Cause I've had ladies, major, don't you get me wrong now." He paused. He sat himself down on the bed and took off his hat, worrying the brim with his fingers with a frown. "My first was this real pretty lady back in Carolina. Hooee, oh boy, she was a good-looking lady. All my brothers was jealous of me that night, let me tell you." He frowned. He scowled. "But her skirts were all fussy and her underdrawers, well, I swear they're made to keep men out, not let 'em in. And I found myself thinking..."

Warren snorted. Loudly.

"Excuse me? You got something you wanna add?"

Warren shook his head. He held up his hands. "Hell, no. I'm all fucking ears right here," he said. 

"See, now I've been so rudely interrupted I've gone and lost my train of thought."

Warren raised his brows, amused. "Well, Chris Mannix, unless I'm very much mistaken - and I don't for one goddamned second think I am - you was just about to tell me how you wished you popped your cherry with a fella instead of a real pretty lady with fussy-ass skirts."

Mannix looked mortified. Warren just laughed. But when they got back up to Red Rock, once they'd gotten past the inevitable fucking knock-down, drag-out fist-fight and bloodied each other's real faces up real good, once they'd gotten past Mannix's dumbass posturing and Warren's fucked-up sense of humor, Mannix went down on his hands and knees there on the bed, on the clean sheets over the bloodstained mattress where they'd both died once, maybe eighteen months before.

"Don't you make me regret this, major," Mannix said, back over his shoulder. 

"Shit, I'm pretty sure we both will," Warren replied, as he shuffled up and joined him. 

And then Warren went and showed him just how fussy men's underdrawers weren't when it came right down to business. 

\---

He won't say they've never looked back, 'cause they have. What he _will_ say is they've never looked elsewhere. 

They average maybe fifteen to twenty jobs per year, even now, not including that one unmitigated fucking disaster that led them one hell of a not-very-fucking-merry dance through three years and seven states and two countries, or what's two countries now at least, Warren's not sure about how the frontiers lay back in the day. Sometimes they get their asses sent on down to Mexico, though there's different guys who usually work the jobs that come up down there. Sometimes they get sent on up to Canada, though there's a girl up there that likes to do it with poison before she gets a rope around their neck and sends 'em on. Once, they wound up in France, motherfucking _France_ , like either of 'em could say much more than _bonjour_ , though Warren guesses Mannix learned _voulez-vous coucher avec moi?_ sometime back in the seventies and Warren always took it like an invitation, which is probably how it was meant. But mostly, mercifully, they stay on US soil. Whoever's in the driving seat, wherever that might be, seems to know their strengths. And, sooner or later, once the job's done, they always go back to Red Rock. 

Minnie's has passed through so many hands Warren's not sure anyone could trace them all and maybe all that shit's a part of John Ruth's job these days. Today, Marquis Warren is Marcus Green. Today, Chris Mannix is Oscar Mann. The place is in both names. And in another ten years or so or maybe sooner, they'll change again; Green and Mann'll be someone new and their faces will change and neither one will give a fuck because they've seen it all, they really have. 

They've gotten real good at playing parts over the years till now it's second nature, till now Mannix lies almost as easy as Warren does, though not to him 'cause fuck, they both know he'll tell. They've learned accents from all over the country, all over the damned world, learned to speak Spanish then parts of Russian, Polish, Mandarin Chinese, but they talk regular whenever they're alone, they talk just like they used to. Now bounty sixteen's turned to seventeen's turned to a hundred, five hundred, two thousand, and they've got a pretty damn good idea of how to do the shit it is they do. And they've seen it all, they really have. 

The first time Mannix woke up black, he was fucking scandalized. He cursed and he broke shit and stared at himself in their full-length mirror like maybe that'd change the fact he'd woke up black and not white just like was usual. Warren just laughed his own black ass off and then he stripped him naked right down to his black-white skin. Warren laughed, real mean and dark, then he pulled Mannix on back against his chest and got his hand around his dick. He jacked him till he came all over that damned mirror, one hand planted firm against his chest and the other making short work of his erection. Mannix was still pissed after, but Warren guesses the point is he was _less_ pissed. Maybe. Maybe not.

The first time Warren woke up white, he was steely fucking prepared for it. He told himself it didn't bother him, why should it, it weren't like identity meant a whole hell of a lot to the two of them anyhow. They'd lost their names fifty years before, in a massacre at Minnie's Haberdashery, and more than that: they'd lost their faces, till they were the only two guys left in the world could see what they both really looked like 'cause that rude-ass motherfucker John Ruth who's walked in on them fucking more than once just don't count at all; it got so regular that these days they just carry on. The problem was, when he dragged Mannix down on his knees there in front of the mirror, when he lubed up Mannix's hole real nice and pushed his dick right up inside, he was watching some white dude fuck some white dude like that shit had ever interested him before. Jesus, it almost lost him his hard-on right then and there, inside him, so he pushed him down on the floor instead.

They did it face to face that time, Mannix bitching about his back 'cause they was down on the floorboards, Warren's knees for shit 'cause it weren't a whole lot like coming back from the dead had made him any younger. He kinda looked it sometimes, he guessed, 'cause he'd shaved off his hair and his beards even though that shit had pained him, but his back still ached and his knees still got shitty in the cold. But they did it like that, fucking stubborn about it, Warren's wrists starting to ache and Mannix's legs cinched in tight around his waist and the son of a bitch clamped his hands around Warren's forearms and shit, Mannix didn't shut up the whole damn time but hell if that didn't just turn Warren on more, or maybe it just made him want to slap the smile right off his face. He did him harder instead, like that was some kind of a viable alternative, feeling pretty damned victorious when he got Mannix's breath to hitch mid-sentence over and over, as skin slapped skin and he shoved balls-deep inside him. He came in him and Mannix came against him and damn if the only way he could get the bastard to shut the fuck up was to kiss him, rough and hard and breathless.

After that, they stuck away from the mirror 'cause it sure as hell hadn't helped none. He stuck to watching his own hands on Mannix's pale-ass white boy skin. He stuck to watching the length of his own cock pushing up inside him. Maybe there's times Warren don't much like Chris Mannix, but he likes to know it's him he's with and not some unfamiliar face. Maybe there's times Warren don't much like Mannix, but he sure does like to fuck him. 

"If we're mean bastards forever, does that mean we don't never die?" Mannix asks, as they're getting their shit together for the job John Ruth just brought them, whatever the hell number that one's come with. They've talked about it: they've both lost count. Warren guesses it don't made no difference anyhow.

"I think we died already," Warren replies. "I think we've died more than a hundred times." Then he packs his six-shooter: Warren ain't much for nostalgia but it reminds him of the guns he lost that night they died. And besides, somehow the guns never show up on security screens. There's no questions ever asked. There's something on their side, that's for sure.

"So, you think maybe one day they'll let us into heaven?" Mannix asks, and leans up against his back. 

Warren laughs. "I sure as hell wouldn't count on it," he says, over his shoulder, because he's not sure what that something is that's on their side. He's not exactly so sure their mission's one from God. 

So they'll take the pickup out to the highway, take the highway out to the airport, get the next plane out to New York City, and they'll be done inside a week. Maybe they'll stay there a while after, Warren thinks, as he zips up his bag with Mannix still pushed up against his back, his hands tucked into his hip pockets, 'cause sometimes, now and then, that's what they do. Cities are a whole lot different now than they ever were when they were living, bigger, taller, busier, full of people in numbers like there never were in the world before now. 

They might buy new guns and new boots and shit for the haberdashery like it's been the damned haberdashery since Minnie met her unfortunate end all those years ago. They might go see a movie 'cause somehow that shit's still a novelty and it ain't like they watch a whole lot of TV, and Warren'll laugh right down deep from his belly at all the least appropriate times and that'll make people stare or glare or what-the-fuck-ever. They don't have to worry about money no more so they could check into some fancy-ass upmarket hotel and drink themselves into a fucking stupid stupor or they could fuck in the shower up against the wall and make a pretty goddamned mess of the bed with the cuffs he sometimes snaps in tight around Mannix's wrists, just 'cause sometimes Mannix likes it. Sometimes he puts a rope around his neck and sometimes Mannix lets him. Warren would say he's surprised by that but shit, Mannix trusted him right from the start. He'd say he's surprised but shit, Warren trusted Mannix too.

And then, after they've done all that or maybe just some of it, they'll go back to the quiet and the horses and shelves full of books they've both read twenty times. They'll go back to well-water showers and the generator they only use in case of emergency but hell, even then it feels kinda like they're cheating. After, they'll go home to Red Rock. 

And then, it'll all start again just like it always does. It's tough to say if it'll ever stop. Warren thinks he'd hate management anyhow, and he's not sure he wants to know what comes after.

In the end, the hell of it is John Ruth was right: you only need to hang mean bastards, but mean bastards you _need_ to hang. And Warren and Mannix? Well, they're the hangmen.


End file.
